A Beckett Canon

1941–45: Semantic Succour

1941–45
Semantic Succour 1941–1945
It is miraculous that Beckett, an Irish national active in the French Resistance , was able to work creatively during World War II. In 1940 Beckett replaced his friend Alfred Péron as the translator of Murphy into French, and he told me that he had ‹nished a ‹rst version by the time he and Suzanne left Paris in August 1942. The Nazis evidently did not view the French Murphy with suspicion, since they did not con‹scate it when they ransacked Beckett’s Paris apartment, but he took no risks with his next novel, Watt. He kept it with him throughout the war, even while sleeping on bare boards as he and Suzanne ›ed the Nazis on their way to “Free” France.1 Later Beckett recalled: “I think Watt was begun in Paris in 1942, then continued evenings mostly in Roussillon and ‹nished 1945 in Dublin and Paris. It was written as it came, without preestablished plan” (Büttner, x–xi). Without “preestablished plan,” Watt lacks a notebook analogous to the Murphy preparations. Beckett began what gradually became Watt on loose white paper, to which he appended a cover sheet: “Begun evening of Tuesday 11/2/41.” After ‹lling six unlined pages in which he drew on Aristotle’s categories, he shifted to a long, stiff-covered notebook (Pilling 1997, 170). Two notebooks of an urWatt were penned in Paris in 1941; the third, begun May 5, 1942, in Paris, records the following other places and dates: Vanves, September 4, 1942; Roussillon, November 18 [1942], and March 1 [1943]. The fourth notebook was written in Roussillon and is dated October 4, 1943. The ‹fth notebook is shared with Malone meurt, but the Watt section is dated February 18, 1945. The sixth book is undated, but a loose sheet is marked: “Dec. 28, 1944 End.” No place is noted for these last two notebooks, but Knowlson believes that Watt was completed in Roussillon, and that Beckett merely “tinkered” with it after his postwar return to Paris and to Dublin (303). 108 Although Watt as published was eventually extracted from the six notebooks now at HRC, Beckett’s original novel is not Watt. Part 1 differs most from the manuscript version, with parts 2 to 4 adhering to it more closely. The addenda were indeed added last, and they salvage some of the jettisoned material. Many Beckett scholars agree with Admussen: “The ‹rst holograph version of Watt, chaotically written and ‹lled with multiple and elaborate doodles and drawings is certainly the most fascinating single Beckett item to be found anywhere” (7). Ur-Watt The protagonist of the ur-Watt is not Watt but James Quin, a sixty-year-old Irishman who is said to spend much of his time reading the nineteenthcentury Italian poet Leopardi. The origin of Mr. Knott, Quin is more ‹rmly inscribed in a social milieu. As in the published Watt, the ur-Knott’s senior servants are named Arsene and Erskine, but Johnny Watt is their junior colleague , who in turn has a more junior colleague named Phelps. Other name changes take place before publication: Mr. Tully to Mr. Gorman, Mr. Gomez (with Spanish z) to Mr. Graves, Mrs. Piscoe to Mrs. Gorman (no relation to Mr. Gorman). However, these name changes are insigni‹cant, when compared to the slippery identity of the narrator or narrators. At ‹rst he seems to be Quin’s servant Johnny Watt, who plans to write a book A Clean Old Man. Midway in A4, however, occurs the sentence that opens part 3 of the published novel: “It was about this time that Watt was transferred to another pavilion leaving me behind in the old pavilion.” Although the notebook then describes the activities of the two “pavilion” inmates, the name of Sam is absent, as in the published volume at this point. Moreover, the narrator’s ‹rst-person singular pronoun gives way after A1 to a nameless ‹rst-person plural. Quin becomes Knott only in A4, where his name occurs in Watt’s inversion “Tonk.” Thereafter Beckett revises Quin to Knott, but he is not consistent in his “switch from Quinism to Knottinability.” It is also in A4 that the name Sam ‹rst appears, replacing a “me” on page 97.2 Aside from the identity of the narrator, it is easier to encompass Becka beckett canon: 1941–45 109 The No Symbols catalog of HRC waxes poetic about the Watt manuscript: “It is, at moments, magni‹cently...